What a difference a room makes...

Hello, friends!

Last night was our first ACF Large Group of the semester.  What a great night!  There are so many things that I could talk about.  The food was fantastic, as always when cooked by the incomparable Asha.  Worship was heartfelt and well executed, led by the wonderful Paula.  Barbara did a great job casting a vision for the semester and getting people excited about being a part of the group.  We had our biggest group of the year thus far (40 students!) and many hung around afterward to fellowship with one another.  All in all, there are tons of reasons to be thankful for last night. 

But, the one piece that I want to focus on the most is the room.  It's amazing what a little atmosphere will do, isn't it? 

When ACF first started, we met in an apartment just off campus.  We were small then so it wasn't a big deal.  As we grew, we outgrew the apartment and moved to the International Community Church, which was also just off campus.  It was great because it had a kitchen and plenty of space for us to do tons of stuff.  ICC was actually half of the building.  The other half housed Hillel, the Jewish student center.  Hillel actually owned the building and was leasing it to ICC. 

In 2011, Hillel decided to lease the ICC half of the building out to the University instead of ICC.  Suddenly, we were out of a place to stay!  The past two semesters we tried using classrooms, but they felt cold and sterile.  It was not a good situation for us.

This past summer, a new director of Hillel took over and I thought it was worth a shot to see if we could move our meetings back to the building, just this time on the Hillel side.  I had asked the previous director, but because we had food, it was a no go.  I figured, it couldn't hurt to ask, right?  Praise Jesus, Brian, the new director, said yes!  We don't have access to the kitchen, on account of us not being kosher, but the space is ours to use as we need it for Large Groups on Wednesdays. 

Apparently, atmosphere is everything.  We replaced immovable desks with tables and chairs.  Our sloped, lecture hall feel was replaced by a sense of community and warmth.  We even now have a ping pong table we can use! 

Honestly, I don't know whether the room felt electric last night because the Spirit was there, because it was the first Large Group of the semester, because the room is so much better than what we had, or because we had a packed house, which we haven't had for a while.  All I know is that it felt much more like home and it felt much more like family. 

Prayer would be appreciated for:
- Area Team Meeting today.  The A-Team is coming to CoMo today, which is a huge blessing to me from a travel standpoint.  Pray for journey's mercies for the team as well as a productive day of hearing from Jesus. 
- BCM momentum.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to see my BCMers a ton this week.  I know that God is still with them, but I wouldn't mind seeing them either.  =0). 

Have an excellent day! 

~Adam